


the company of clever, well-informed people

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: HEYER Georgette - Works, The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer, The Quiet Gentleman - Georgette Heyer
Genre: F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miss Morville makes friends in the first circles of society.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the company of clever, well-informed people

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lost_spook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/gifts).



> A fandom-stocking gift for lost_spook.

Drusilla only knows Sophy Stanton-Lacy, shortly to be Sophy Rivenhall, because her fiancé does, but she is increasingly grateful for her company. Gervase had promised her that she would like Sophy - that everybody liked 'the Grand Sophy', as he called her - but Drusilla, conscious of the occasional snippet of information in the letters sent to her by London relatives and picked up in her friends' gossip, had taken leave to doubt this. Miss Stanton-Lacy was, if not wild, ebullient, and she had lived an adventurous life. Drusilla felt that such a creature must, of necessity, find her boring. What had they in common?

"In the Peninsula you would have been the best of friends, and the best of managers," Gervase assured her. "There would have been no-one to touch you for housekeeping in adversity."

Drusilla was forced to remind him that they were not in the Peninsula, and that that war was over. 

Gervase caught her hands, his thumbs rubbing lightly over her knuckles, soothing the nervousness in the lines of her hands, easing the worry from the tight corners of her eyes; she wanted Gervase's friends to like her, and feared that this one, at least, would be disappointed in his choice and say so. And Drusilla had known that Sophy Stanton-Lacy did not lead the world of fashion - but she'd also known that those who did listened to her, and that her dislike had consequences.

"She will appreciate your good sense," Gervase said gently. "Which extends considerably beyond housekeeping, as I am well aware. Sophy is always deploying everyone else's lack of sense; she will admire your intelligence. It was a jest, my ridiculous robin."

At the time, Drusilla only found a dubious smile for him.

But he was right, and his being right has led her here, to a fashionable modiste of Sophy's suggestion, choosing her wedding-clothes. She smiles at Sophy, who is examining several dresses with her, a slight frown on her handsome face. She has found it easier to take her place as Gervase's future wife with Sophy on her side, bright-eyed, confident, occasionally outrageous, and possessed of the entrée to every social event of consequence. Sophy sweeps her along, as she sweeps most people along, but Drusilla is enjoying herself, and enjoying the way that Gervase smiles to see it. And Sophy does value her opinions.

Drusilla also finds the way Charles Rivenhall always looks a little stunned and more than faintly infatuated around his fiancée deeply amusing. He is stern, and for herself Drusilla prefers Gervase's easy manners, his fair good looks and laughing eyes, but she can understand how Sophy and Charles were drawn to each other.

"I love pink," Drusilla says, fingering the material in question a little regretfully, "but I think the sea-green became me far better."

"I agree - and it will look well with that pretty figured shawl of yours," Sophy says, and they conclude their business for the moment, in favour of luncheon. 

"I have a dilemma to set before you," Sophy says, when they have returned to Sophy's aunt's home, and Sophy is enthusiastically addressing a dish of dressed crab.

"Oh?" Drusilla says, and settles down to apply her mind to whatever problem Sophy has chosen to take on.


End file.
